How to Read “Giving birth is easier than worrying about it”
Anzuru yori umu ga yasushi
Meaning of “Giving birth is easier than worrying about it”
This proverb means that actually doing something is much easier than worrying about it beforehand. People tend to make difficulties seem bigger in their imagination when facing something new.
But when they actually try it, things often turn out less difficult than expected. Sometimes the path opens naturally as you work through it.
People use this proverb to encourage someone who hesitates to act because of anxiety or worry. It’s also used when you decide to stop worrying too much and take that first step toward a challenge.
This teaching still applies to modern life in many situations. These include jumping into new environments, learning new skills, and building relationships.
Everyone feels anxious before taking action. This proverb teaches us not to let that anxiety control us too much.
Origin and Etymology
This proverb comes from childbirth, one of life’s major events. Pregnant women and their families carry many worries before giving birth.
Will the baby be born safely? Can I endure the pain? Will both mother and child stay healthy? The concerns never end.
However, many women who have given birth say things like “It worked out better than I thought” or “It wasn’t as hard as I worried it would be.”
Of course, childbirth is never easy. But the fear and anxiety imagined beforehand often feel bigger than the actual experience.
This lesson from experience gradually spread beyond childbirth to apply to all areas of life. Challenging a new job, speaking in public, taking a difficult exam—even when anxiety feels crushing beforehand, you can often overcome it once you start.
Records of this proverb appear in Edo period literature. This shows it has been passed down as Japanese wisdom for at least several hundred years.
Born from the universal experience of childbirth, these words have encouraged many people across the ages.
Usage Examples
- I was anxious about being assigned as the new project leader, but “giving birth is easier than worrying about it”—once I started, things went surprisingly well
- Programming seemed too difficult to even try, but “giving birth is easier than worrying about it”—now that I’ve started, I’m actually enjoying it
Universal Wisdom
Human imagination sometimes becomes our greatest obstacle. We are creatures who feel far greater fear toward the unknown than reality warrants.
This proverb has been passed down for hundreds of years because it perfectly captures this human nature.
Think about it. Of all the difficulties you’ve overcome so far, how many were as hard as you worried they’d be?
In most cases, when you actually faced them, they weren’t as frightening as you imagined. In fact, the time spent anxious and hesitant before acting was probably more painful than the actual action.
Humans tend to overestimate things they haven’t experienced. This ability may have developed as a survival instinct to avoid danger.
But in modern society, this instinct can sometimes limit our possibilities instead.
This proverb teaches us the truth that reality only becomes clear through action. Just thinking in your head only makes anxiety grow.
But once you take that first step, specific challenges become visible, solutions can be found, and above all, you can start believing in your own strength.
Our ancestors deeply understood this essential truth about human psychology.
When AI Hears This
When humans worry about something, a surprisingly large amount of information processing happens in the brain. For example, before taking on a new job, we imagine countless scenarios.
“What if I fail?” “What will others think?” “Am I not prepared enough?” In information theory terms, this is an extremely high entropy state.
Entropy, simply put, is a measure of “how spread out the possibilities are.”
What’s interesting is the gap between this imagined information volume and the actual information volume. When worrying, the human brain processes dozens, sometimes hundreds of “possible bad outcomes” in parallel.
But once you take action, reality always converges to a single path. In other words, the nearly infinite possibilities compress into one concrete experience.
This information asymmetry becomes clear when you think in numbers. If the information processed during worry is 100 units, the information actually experienced might be only 10 units.
Moreover, once you start acting, you get concrete feedback. The brain only needs to process clear information about “what to do next.” Uncertainty drops sharply.
The human brain tends to generate excessive information about future uncertainty. This was effective as a survival strategy, but in modern times it becomes cognitive waste.
This proverb brilliantly captures this mathematical truth—that action compresses information all at once.
Lessons for Today
Modern society is an age of information overload. Search the internet and you’ll find endless stories of failure and risk.
As a result, more people try to prepare perfectly before acting, which actually prevents them from moving at all. This proverb teaches something important to such modern people.
Perfect preparation doesn’t exist. No matter how much information you gather, there’s more that you can only learn through actual experience.
What matters is the courage to start small. If you’re thinking about changing jobs, start with a side job first. If you’re interested in a new hobby, join a trial class. If you’re troubled by relationships, try saying just one word first.
The anxiety inside you is, in most cases, like a shadow without substance. Rather than stopping in fear of that shadow, take one step forward into the light.
There you’ll find a much brighter view than you imagined. You don’t need to fear failure. Real learning and growth await you beyond action.
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